a beautiful horizon and the passage of time….
I don’t know why I love time lapse photography so very much, but I do; I love seeing time, and I love remembering that we’re really just tiny bits of life on a large planet, whirling around in a larger galaxy, in a larger-still universe. Instead of making me feel small, it makes me feel large, and infinite.
this video was posted by the embarrassed big sister of the singer. the baby jesus slept through everything.
I think that’s the lyric — anyway, this little singer gave me a big smile and I hope she does you, too. Give this a chance; once all the little singers assemble and the song gets underway, you’ll see what I mean.
Merry Christmas Eve, y’all!
meanwhile, here I sit doing a whole lot of nothing.
In the truest meaning of that overused word, this gave me a feeling of awe. Chills. I felt transported, moved, shifted, elevated, awed. (The guy gets a little heavy-handed, literally, at the beginning but straightens up very quickly…)
Yeah? You too? Don’t you imagine that’s how Tchaikovsky heard it in his head when he was writing it?
all i want for christmas is you (and his courage)
I want to be his friend — I want to be him. If this doesn’t make you grin like an idiot, get up right now and go slap yourself in the face. Seriously. Lighten up.
“you been goofing with the bees?”
On his facebook wall, my son recently posted something he called “The Nostalgia Series.” That led me to think there would be at least one more post like it, but so far I’m still waiting. What he posted, though, filled me with nostalgia. Have you ever seen The Point, an animated movie from 1971? (Not available streaming, but on DVD on Netflix). It’s about a little boy named Oblio, born with a round head in a village where everyone’s heads are pointed, the houses are pointed, everything is pointed. Has a point. Oblio is different, and odd (but loved by his pointy-headed family), and eventually he’s cast out and has a bunch of adventures in the wider world. It’s brilliantly-colored, like a Peter Max print, but the best part is that Harry Nilsson wrote and performed the soundtrack. My kids loved it and so did I; we may have watched it hundreds of times over the years of their childhood, and when I hear even a whiff of a lyric or melody, I’m transported back, in that way beloved music can do.
Here’s a clip, with one very beautiful song (music starts at 30secs):
Nilsson said, “I was on acid and I looked at the trees and I realized that they all came to points, and the little branches came to points, and the houses came to point. I thought, ‘Oh! Everything has a point, and if it doesn’t, then there’s a point to it.’” That’s so him. Here’s another one of my favorites. Sigh.
Thanks Will, for starting the nostalgia series. I can take it from here. (Here’s the clip he originally posted — it’s so funny, such a relic of its times. I can dig it.)
blue skies, smiling at me / nothing but blue skies, do i see. / blue birds, singing a song / nothing but blue birds, all day long.
I was taking a walk with someone a day or two ago who looked up at the beautiful cloudless sky and said “the sky looked exactly like this on September 11.” This time of year, in this city, perfect days with cloudless blue skies call that to mind, I guess. That kind of juxtaposition is often associated with tragedy, and I guess it just magnifies everything so much…..there we were, just having a good time, when out of the blue….
Anyway. It’s another gorgeous day, with cloudless blue skies, and I’m so grateful for it. My nasty-ass summer cold is finally starting to ebb, after a solid week, so good things seem even brighter. The sun is out, the sky is blue, it’s beautiful, and so are you, even if your name isn’t Prudence. In honor of the beautiful day, I offer you two versions of musical blue skies. One version, Willie Nelson’s cover of Blue Skies, is a bluesy melancholy-tinged version and the other, ELO’s Mr. Blue Sky is right up your alley if you’re feeling sunny and happy. I aim to please, no matter where you may be emotionally!
Also! One sleeve down, and I’m super-motivated to knock the second sleeve out as fast as I can because I’ve got my Vodka Gimlet yarn coming, and I want to wear this sweet little cardigan while I can:
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- sleeve 1, woo-hoo!
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- the band is 1×1 ribbing, to prevent the stockinette roll.
on the radio, whoa oh oh oh on the radio, whoa oh oh oh, someone found a letter you wrote me, on the radio….GEE i love New York.
Last week, on my trip downtown, this stern-looking black guy wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase got on the train. I wouldn’t have noticed him, but he started shouting (I had to get out my little notebook to write this down….I couldn’t make this up!):
Jesus Christ is coming soon!
I met him at Lincoln Center.
He was wearing jeans.
He was very cute.
He went on to address our expected concerns about his message, saying he knows we’re wondering why Jesus Christ would’ve met him there — him, a black guy. Of all the concerns I may have had, that actually wasn’t on my list.
And if you’ve read this blog for a long time, you may remember a couple times I’ve mentioned this woman who comes into the train wheeling a little boombox and speaker, and sings that old disco Donna Summer song, “On the Radio.” Well I just love that song anyway, but she does such a wonderful job I’m always happy when she appears. (And that’s pretty rare; most of the time it’s horrible…the other exception is the roaming mariachi band I adore.) This time I pulled out my phone and shot a little video, so you can hear her voice. It’s amazing. Although I do wonder if she has any other song in her repertoire; I’ve been listening to her sing this for years, and this is all she ever sings. It’s only 56 seconds, so wait for the end, when she gets to the belting-it-out part. She came on at one stop, and I had to get off at the next. Bummer. (And sorry for not knowing how to rotate the video 
.)
da da da da da da? da da DA da da da!
This is definitely going on my happy page, but I was afraid you’d miss it and it’s just too wonderful. Thanks to Pamela for posting it on fb!
when the moon is in the seventh house, and jupiter aligns with mars…
Are you like me? Do you love time-lapse photography of the sky? Yeah? Here:
From the photographer: This was filmed between 4th and 11th April 2011. I had the pleasure of visiting El Teide. Spain´s highest mountain @(3718m) is one of the best places in the world to photograph the stars and is also the location of Teide Observatories, considered to be one of the world´s best observatories.
The goal was to capture the beautiful Milky Way galaxy along with one of the most amazing mountains I know El Teide. I have to say this was one of the most exhausting trips I have done. A large sandstorm hit the Sahara Desert on the 9th April and at approx 3am in the night the sandstorm hit me, making it nearly impossible to see the sky with my own eyes.
Interestingly enough my camera was set for a 5 hour sequence of the milky way during this time and I was sure my whole scene was ruined. To my surprise, my camera had managed to capture the sandstorm which was backlit by Grand Canary Island making it look like golden clouds. The Milky Way was shining through the clouds, making the stars sparkle in an interesting way. So if you ever wondered how the Milky Way would look through a Sahara sandstorm, look at 00:32.
Music by my friend: Ludovico Einaudi – “Nuvole bianche” with permission.
I know they come looking for me, boy, know they come looking for me…gotta get behind the mule in the morning and plow.
Just in time for the upcoming Christian holiday:
And don’t think he made this up — this page shows you all kinds of chocolate Jesus confections, if you want to get some for the kids this Easter! Chocolate Last Suppers, chocolate crucifixes, crucifix lollipops, something for everyone. Me, I love Peeps.
Tom Waits LOVE. I love this one too — the line “come on down off the cross, we could use the wood” — is just so great.
The world is not my home, I’m just a-passin through, that line in the song is from an old hymn my great-grandmother sang for the last dozen years of her life.
And this one reminds me of a specific day with my friend Sherlock.
and it was red, too. with a froth of lace around it.
I didn’t think the SNL skit was really all that funny — the tiny hats sketch — and apparently there was a big firestorm after it aired. It seems the writers are accused of stealing the idea from someone else, some other show. Maybe it was funnier on the other show.
Basically, a group of women are having lunch, and one comes in wearing a tiny hat, like the photo above. it becomes a one-up contest, with the hats becoming tinier and tinier. Pretty silly. Oh, tv, where do you come up with such dreck.
Union Square subway station, New York City! That’s where. Yesterday when I was walking through the subway station, a woman passed me wearing a very tiny red hat, cocked rakishly on the side, kind of like the photo above. It was about half the size of that one, though. She had some kind of stud stuck in her face, to complete the look. The station was so crowded, and we were all moving so fast, there’s no way I could get a picture, unfortunately. Who gets up in the morning and thinks, “All this outfit needs is my tiny hat!”
istanbul was constantinople, now it’s istanbul not constantinople been a long time gone since constantinople….
A bit of a strange one from me — my weekend was consumed with exciting plans, but there’s nothing to show for it yet!! This has been running through my mind nonstop:
dairse darrison and a tearis tasin losh clavette
WHAT?????? Serene Branson was the star of the Grammy’s. She had exclusive footage of what went on at the Grammys but instead decided to introduce us to her new language, complete with burtation, possibly birdation as well as a dairse darrison and a tearis tasin losh clavette behend the pet to finish it all off.
Maybe she had a stroke, thinking compassionately.
(edit: according to reports i found, she was in the throes of a complex migraine. she was examined at the scene for the possibility of a stroke, and is ok. the 2nd time i watched the video, i saw fear and something like terror in her mouth, she seemed to realize something was wrong. since she’s ok, i feel less like a shitty person for still finding it funny.)
You will find peace of mind / If you look way down in your heart and soul. Sing it, dudes. And rock those pants.
white girl with an afro. 1976. ugh.
Psychologists have documented the “reminiscence bump,” which refers to the fact that we have the most (and the most dense) memories from our adolescence and early adulthood. Music from that period is kind of like freeze-dried coffee; everything is condensed and just a drop of attention unlocks a whole energized thing. My adolescence and early adulthood took place in the 70s, so I’m unreasonably fond of disco and afros and polyester shirts (memories of polyester shirts, that is). If I hear a song from the 70s, all I have to do is close my eyes and everything comes flooding back, rich with sensory detail. Feelings, subtle edges of how I felt then, who I was then, what my life was like then, it’s all right there even though I don’t walk around remembering all that.
So this morning I was looking on youtube for a John Prine video and in the related video section was one of my old favorites, That’s The Way (of the world), by Earth, Wind & Fire. OH I loved that song then, and seeing the video made me remember just how cool those guys were. The tight tight [tight!] pants, the hair, the moves, man, how cool. Right on. All right. If the 70s are part of your reminiscence bump too, you might enjoy this:
how many ways can we love Cee Lo? AND DONUTS.
Popping in for a very quick post while eating my impoverished little diet lunch. These two videos have my head spinning. An ASL version of Cee Lo Green’s F*^k You, made even better if that’s at all possible, and a piece on Cambodian donut makers in southern California. I have a soft spot in my heart for all things Cambodian….and, well, donuts. My kryptonite. My achilles’ heel. And now I’ve gone and revealed that to all of you. (mmm, donuts, part of the explanation for today’s lunch I guess.)
Awesome, right? R-i-i-i-g-h-t.
have you seen KW’s ridiculous tweets? Do you like soft pop? this one’s for you.
Hey, just this one more from me. I adore Alan Cumming (I got to see him perform the role of Emcee in Cabaret on Broadway, and I was right by the stage, close enough to see the glitter on his nipples. I KNOW!) and follow his blog. This morning he posted this, and it cracked me up, man:
in heaven there is no beer, that’s why we drink it here. and when we’re gone from here, all our friends will be drinking all our beer!
I think I’ll start with the “not beauty” so I can end on a high note, on the last post I’ll ever write in 2010. We’re 5 days past Blizzardgeddon – the idiotic name the media gave to our big storm last Sunday – and boy is the bloom off that rose. For real. Here’s a shot out my living room window (shot through a filthy living room window, I apologetically add), of the view of my street. It’s made even worse by the fact that tomorrow morning trash is picked up, so it’s all out at the curb. Days like this I have to repeat over and over to myself “you love NY, you love NY, you love NY.”
looks like a set for a post-apocalyptic movie, doesn't it?
It only needs blood-dripping zombies staggering down the street to complete the gloomy lifeless feeling. Good thing I don’t feel gloomy and lifeless. Or zombie-like.
So here’s the beauty. My 3rd daughter has figured out that a very easy gift for me is yarn. She sometimes gives me a book – I’m so very very easy. The easiest person in the whole wide world. Here’s what she gave me for this past Om Day celebration — Berroco’s new Ultra Alpaca tonal, 2 skeins:
430 yards, worsted weight.....GO!
So soft, so beautiful, such a long queue to fit it into. There are worse problems.
And I’ll end unexpectedly, since this is a fancy day of anticipatory celebration (yay new decade! wait…last year actually startNever mind.). You get to decide whether this is beauty or not beauty. For me, it’s beauty all the way. It’s my favorite polka of ALL TIME, “In heaven there is no beer”. I used to polka around my bedroom to this when I was pretty little, and yes I was ‘unusual.’
See you next year!
dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, I made it out of clay…..
GENIUS.
Chanukah oy Chanukah
A yontif a sheyner,
A lustiker a freylekher
Nisht do nokh azoyner
Ale nakht mit dreydlech shpiln mir,
Frishe heyse latkes, esn on a shir.
in the bleak midwinter, the promise of a solstice means everything.
Dark and cold, life far far far away, and can it come back? Is it too dark, too cold, too hopeless? Too bleak? These are the forever questions of deep winter, the reason for celebrating winter solstice, and if you are Christian, a reason for celebrating the birth of Christ. If you live somewhere warm, these aspects of solstice or Christmas might not have the same easy resonance as if you live in a place with dark and cold winters, short days and long nights, earth that really does get hard as iron and water like a stone.
If you’ve read very many posts on my blog, you won’t be that surprised to know that I cry very easily and am quickly moved. (unexplained here, but I cry when I hear the Spice Girls sing Say You’ll Be There.) ANYWAY. This video presents my very favorite song of this season, “In the Bleak Midwinter.” It features the Gloucester Cathedral Choir, so it gathers so many things I love — the song, a choir, in a beautiful cathedral. Although I was raised to be a Christian, my personal beliefs have fractured and aren’t easily categorized into anything other than the vague handwavey “spiritual,” but this song makes me cry and feel kind of cracked open, if you know what I mean.
If you have ever stood in a dark or bleak place and wondered about hope, or redemption, or life, or recovery, or cycles, this song speaks to that place. I have a whole playlist of different versions of this song (Judy Collins has a beautiful version), and never get tired of hearing it at this time of year:
I remember one bitter cold, clear night when I was a teenager in north Texas. The earth really did turn to iron then; as they like to say, there’s nothing between Wichita Falls and the North Pole but a barbed wire fence. I had no place to go, and I lay on the street in a dark alley, staring at the sky. The night could scarcely have been darker or colder, and I lay there looking at the bright stars, aware that no one knew where I was and I felt truly all alone on the face of the earth….a feeling that easily haunts me, all these years later. But the despair of that night passed, that awful winter passed, that bleakness passed — as those things always do. Light does return; warmth comes back; life forces itself out of those hard places that look dead; you just have to wait and believe that it will happen, even when it doesn’t feel possible.
well it makes ME laugh anyway.
I can’t convey how truly hilarious this is to me. It makes me feel like I used to feel when I’d play softball during gym class, in elementary school – if I was on 3rd base, I’d have to pee so bad from the excitement and anxiety that I couldn’t make it to home base. First of all, I used to love disco. OK, there’s that. But seeing this guy dance?! It’s the only time I’ve ever seen it, and I never will see it in real life.
three things that choke me up, here on a bitter cold Friday morning
The newest:
How’d they do that without being corny? I was watching it all alone this morning at 6am, kind of steeled against being moved because I’d read that it was moving (like, ‘oh yeah? not me buddy…’) and then there I was with big tears in my eyes.
Next: I know I put this on the Laos blog on Thanksgiving, but I find myself unable to stop thinking about it. When I was a little kid, I was dark. I read too much Kafka and Camus at too young an age, wondered about the meaning of life, blah blah blah, loved to call myself an “existentialist” by which I meant what people usually mean, which seems to be an assumption that it’s all meaningLESS. But of course that’s not what it really means; at least, that’s not the end of it. Existentialism really means that we endow the meaning ourselves, more or less. I once heard Leo Buscaglia say that people who wonder about the meaning of life are really just talking about the experience of life, that the point is to experience life. I’ve become very impatient with people who mope around and say there’s no meaning. FUCK THAT, yes there is. You’re here, we’re here, we get to be here. And here’s the bit I can’t stop thinking about, that I put on my Laos blog, from Cat’s Cradle, The Books of Bokonon (Kurt Vonnegut, of course):
God made mud. God got lonesome. So God said to some of the mud, “Sit up!” “See all I’ve made,” said God, “the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.” And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud. I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done. Nice going, God. Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly couldn’t have. I feel very unimportant compared to You. The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn’t even get to sit up and look around. I got so much, and most mud got so little. Thank you for the honor! Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep. What memories for mud to have! What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met! I loved everything I saw! Good night.”
Yeah. Every day that we get to be here – even for the real shitty stuff – it’s an honor. Lucky us, and I mean that in the most honest, least ironic way.
And finally (since this is just the $200 category), this one always makes me cry and fits well with the Vonnegut passage, for me:
Happy Friday y’all.
remember this?
Thanks Katie –
we are the world, we are the linguists. we make theories.
I LOVE THIS!!! And Marnie – I see something in here for The Sociologists. Drag Tom over to watch this.
Totally, totally amazing.
conan, rocking India and Hindi and weaving, all at once.
Hi Conan. You are so so funny, I’d be glad to have your grandchildren. (what?!) (and p.s., I’ve been to all the cities in the video! I recognize Jaipur and probably Udaipur…. double cool!)
let me introduce you to one of my favorite artists – Andy Goldsworthy.
One of my dearly-loved friends told me she might be going to Scotland for an Anselm Keifer exhibit; since she’s my art friend (among other things) we started talking about artists we love, and I got to thinking – again – about Andy Goldsworthy, whose work haunts me. Do you know him? There’s a gorgeous film about him and his work called Rivers and Tides (streaming here on Netflix!), and no matter how many times I’ve watched it, I always want / need to watch it again. In fact, I think I’ll watch it again after I publish this post. Here’s the trailer:
Of the myriad reasons I love the film, one is that he just is an artist, it’s not what he does it’s who he is, and you really get a sense of what the world is like for him. Plus, his work is just so beautiful. And of course it’s all about time, and permanence (i.e., impermanence), and the world, and Everything.
I was going to plop in a few photos of his work but couldn’t even narrow it to a few “favorites” because I love them all. Here’s the Google Images page for him, you’ll get a quick overview. This is the ‘works’ page on his website for another quick overview. If you happen to live in my neck of the woods, generally speaking, you may know about Storm King Art Center; he has an installation there too. There are a number of books and other media about him and his work.
I love to share things with you – I hope his work makes you happy! (And on top of everything else, the tiny little cherry on the big gorgeous sundae, he has an adorable accent. )
i always hate it when people say this to me, but maybe they’re right: worse things DO happen at sea.
So I’m looking on the bright side here. The glass is half full. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. And other inane and trite platitudes as well.
I cannot stay asleep any more. Last night I went to sleep around 11, and woke up at 12:34. (no kidding) Then I was awake at 1:15, 2:20, 3:30 (was wide awake for at least 45 minutes that time), 5:00, and 5:30. Finally I just got up. What the hell – may as well knit. So, in the spirit of the above-mentioned platitudes, look at all this knitting time I have created in a day! Who needs sleep anyway – apparently not me! I’ve been saying I wish I had more hours in the day, and now I do! Lucky lucky me! (maybe my glass is more than half full, maybe it’s overflowing!) All those exclamation points!
Don’t tell my other projects ….. shh ….. but I started the Laar swatch. Again in the spirit of overflowing glasses, swatching is the best thing in the world! Not only do you get a better sense that your sweater might fit, you also get to play with that new yarn that’s whispering/calling/shouting at you all the time. You get to free two birds with one, um, act! So much nicer than killing two birds, what a violent saying. So in my middle-night knitting, I wound one skein of my yarn into a ball and cast on:
my Laar swatch, with Clotho
The subtle shifts in color are really going to make this fabric gorgeous. I can’t wait to block the finished swatch and see what happens with the yarn. Laceweight yarn on size US6 needles produces such an airy, light fabric, very very pretty. But making the swatch is definitely relieving some of the ‘must cast on now’ pressure, which is great because I need to finish my shrug and my scarf.
And now, the source of this title’s post. From The Life of Brian (the best part of that Monty Python movie, in my opinion): “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” The post title comes in at the end of the song, and always made me and Marnie crack up. Worse things happen at sea, what a bizarre and hilarious line:
Happy Friday y’all!
the art of relaxating – you’ve gotta see this
footloose, kick off your sunday shoes…
I put these things in my blog to save them for myself — but you might really like this, too. If you like dancing in the movies (I don’t mean YOU getting up and dancing at the movie theater, you goof), look at this wonderful mashup. Travolta! Bacon! Uma! Flashdance! Ewan and Nicole! PENGUINS, for Pete’s sake!! I was smiling when it started, but busted out laughing pretty fast.
bliss out, man.
Marnie introduced me to Regina Spektor several summers ago, and I was hooked on her voice. BUT…you know, you have too huge a library (my iTunes library 7,082 items) and you don’t always feel like going through it to create playlists but it’s too varied to just random play it, so you tend to rely on the same old playlists all the time. When I’m listening to it at home and not on my iPod, I love the Genius playlists, and try to seed them with music that I like but that’s not on my regular old playlists I’ve listened to a thousand times.
So I’m feeling a good bit of bliss – it is a gorgeous day, I’m making shrimp ceviche and cold cucumber soup, and I’m knitting on Peasy quite happily, and listening to music. I seeded a Genius playlist with Light and Day, by Polyphonic Spree, since that song totally totally blisses me out, man, and I wanted to see what songs would come up as related in some way.
And I came to Someday, by Regina Spektor. She is amazing, if you haven’t heard her. Here’s a live performance of the song on The Tonight Show:
Such a unique voice and woman.
JewBu poetry and a farting aerobics instructor. I cover it all.
I seem to be gathering words about me today, so I share some of my favorites here (a) in case you like them too, and (b) so I have them at my fingertips.
First, though, before the fancy-schmancy, this little 21-second giggle. Bless her heart. And have your volume turned up so you can hear it.
Now, the poems:
CLICK to continue reading a words-focused day... Continue reading »
Life in a day. It’s a project.
Thanks to the lovely blogger at perches in the soul (do check out her blog, if you don’t already follow her!), I just learned about something that’s going on this Saturday. It’s a public and global project called Life In A Day; we’re supposed to videotape some portion of our day and upload it to YouTube. Quoting from perches:
“YouTube is working with director Kevin MacDonald & producer Ridley Scott to create a documentary about 1 day in history and the 6 billion perspectives of humanity as we live it.”
Here’s another link about the larger project: here.
Cool, right? I’d love to see that documentary. I’ll toss in my few frames, won’t you do it too? What will I film? Maybe e knitting, or maybe I’ll go to Central Park (but there’s a good chance of thunderstorms Saturday). What would you film this Saturday?
need to insult someone? here you go!
you’re welcome.
too bad I had to frog my wonderful socks. 
Yesterday I got a lot of knitting done. I worked on my great-looking sock and got into the heel flap. I adore the pattern; it’s so thick and squishy, so 3-dimensional in a cool way, architectural, even. The socks must be warm, warm, warm.
And the yarn – I totally love the yarn. I love the shifts in color, and the particular colors themselves….that brilliant turquoise, a deep olive, dark reds, light purples, rich browns. And this variegated yarn works great with this pattern, because the color contrasts are so interesting.
BUT. Oh, how there is a but. As Pee-Wee Herman said to Simone, sitting in the dinosaur’s head, “everyone I know has a big but.”*** For some reason I wasn’t going to have nearly enough yarn! After only 3 pattern repeats, I was more than halfway finished with one ball of yarn. I kept going back to ravelry, looking at other people’s project pages for this pattern knit with this yarn, and they always listed 2 balls of yarn for a pair of socks. And the pattern makes these 3D squishy socks….but mine were stiff like heavy cardboard. I kept going back to ravelry, looking at other people’s project pages for this pattern knit with this yarn, and my needles were the same size as theirs. I must have been knitting very tightly. I know I was, actually, because I was fighting the needles.
Desperately I decided oh what the hell, I’ll just make the tops kind of short. Three pattern repeats, that’ll be ok, right? But what if I still run out of yarn, and end up needing to buy another ball or two? Then I’d have too-short socks for no good reason. I forged ahead, trusting – other people got one sock out of one ball of yarn, other people used these needles, it all worked out, other times and other projects I thought it’s not going to work but then it did so just keep going, trust the project.
Two-thirds of the way down the heel flap I finally threw in the towel. I pulled the sock off the needles and pulled it on my foot, just to see. Yeah, it was stiff and cardboardey. I had clung too tightly to the yarn and needles. Kind of like life, during hard times – clinging too tightly is not going to help. I love it when knitting reinforces a life lesson.
***here’s that clip from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, where he says that hilarious line to Simone:
who doesn’t love a laughing baby??
And also – Chicago weather!
Lightning strikes three of the tallest buildings in Chicago at the same time! from Craig Shimala on Vimeo.
it’s RAINING SIDEWAYS
So I’m just sitting on the couch, working, and all of a sudden I smell it – I smell the rain. And it’s blowing SIDEWAYS, at great force. And it’s thundering. Perhaps even lightning? So of course what does anyone think at that moment:
You’re welcome. I’m always doing this for you.
p.s. edit: the intense storm lasted for 2.5 minutes. it was an hour’s worth of storm squeezed into 2.5 minutes, i kid you not!
Eddie Izzard + legos = brilliance.
Oh, Eddie Izzard, you make me so happy.
Pixie and Dixie and Mr. Jinks
Trapped mouse update: Silence from the ceiling. This is such terrible news, you have no idea. I see face masks and gagging in our olfactory futures. In response to Pip‘s comment on my building a better mousetrap post below, in which she reminded me of Tom and Jerry, I (being a very old person) remembered Pixie and Dixie, a pair of mice who were always outsmarting Jinx the Cat – featured regularly on the old Huckleberry Hound Show. Even though they always got away from him, Jinx always said “I love meeces to pieces.”
I searched YouTube and found this cartoon…..perfectly perfect for me and this blog, because it’s about Cousin Tex coming to visit.
Happy Father’s Day to anyone with a dad, or a husband who’s a dad!
Cooking with the anal-retentive chef was always a clean experience.
Do you remember this? I always loved the character. I tried to post it on Luscious, but it’s a wordpress.com account so this doesn’t work. I’ll just share it here:
So funny! It was so sad when and how he died. My day will be full of thinking about my daughter Marnie, because I’m trying to finish her wedding dress, and work on her shawl. But that doesn’t mean I’m not also thinking about my other daughter Katie, my other daughter Anna, and my darling son Will. Hi y’all.
Sam Stone came home to his wife and family after serving in the conflict overseas.
It’s not all parades and cemeteries, you know:
I didn’t get much knitting done today, or anything else other than work. Boo. But we did eat some mighty fine pizza.
blogrumps
another of my brilliant neologisms. or not.
I made up that word, “blogrumps,” and it’s not about the expansion of bloggers’ rumps (though that may be true, too), it’s a melding of blog and grumps. Most sincere apologies if I offend anyone, but I have a couple of complaints:
And thus concludes the end of my blogrump. My blog grump. Maybe I’m just grumpy because I accidentally put too much cinnamon in my oatmeal this morning. And the city hasn’t picked up the trash since Christmas Eve, and there’s just a tiny narrow path down my street between the giant piles of trash spilling out from both sides of the street.
Here – this’ll change the mood. I love these little boys.